A curious Nile crocodile examines a remote camera in Kenya's Lake Turkana.
Crocodile Poaching Booms as Egypt Tourism Crumbles
Fewer foreign visitors and political chaos has led some Egyptians to turn to hunting Nile crocodiles as a source of revenue.
Lake Nasser, EgyptIf they’re small, you use the bulk of the boat to hustle them into the shallows, then snag them by hand, Mahmoud tells me. He should know, having spent the past decade poaching the scaly beasts around the southern city of Aswan.
If they’re medium-size, perhaps the length of a kayak, he says (he won’t tell me his family name because of the illegal nature of his work), you noose them with barbed wire traps. And if they’re monsters—up to 18 feet of whiplashing tail, bristling teeth, and relentless aggression—you dazzle them with a spotlight, entangle them in fishing nets, and subdue them with a shot to their exposed underbelly.
“There’s not a crocodile I can’t catch, or a hunting ground I
